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User blog:ARandomStone/Grail Trivia for new players
REMINDER: THIS IS BY NO MEANS MEANT AS AN ACTUAL WIKI; IT'S JUST A GUIDE FOR NEW PLAYERS TO GET A GRASP AND A FEELING FOR THE GAME'S FUNCTIONS AND A SORT OF HELP I WANTED TO PROVIDE As a new player in F/GO I was basically dumbstruck by how deep this game delves in matters such as team composition, combat strategies vs different enemies and using my servants to my advantage. In this blog post I'd like to address something that many new players struggle with once they learn the basics of the game and how to level their servants: The grailing. In order to grail a servant you need to ascend them to their final stage, which you can do by leveling them and then increasing their max level cap in the Ascension menu provided by da Vinci in the enhancement section. And of course you need a very important item: a Holy Grail. You can obtain them by completing Singularities and some Events. A more detailed description can be found in the dedicated wiki article on Palingenesis. But let's move on. Like everybody else I was wondering which servant to use my first grail on. Should I just keep it and wait for an incredibly strong servant like good ol' Gil to come? (I'm still waiting btw) Maybe I should strengthen my strongest servant to make him/her even stronger? How about using it on a useful low rarity servant I like? Well, grailing a servant technically strengthens their stats, so it isn't wasted on any servant as long as you like them and actively use them in your teams. Many players recommend grailing low star servants since you can easily max their NP-Lv and thus dish out some good numbers while making the servants worthwhile even in late game content, so I am going to go into detail here and name some examples of very helpful low rank servants F2P users can grail to make them still usable in late game and end game content. I personally recommend not grailing a servant to Lv100 unless you want to do it for waifu/husbando reasons (like I did with my Nero), but just do whatever floats your boat ;) Saber= SABER Sadly we don't get many Sabers to choose from below SR, so we can basically just either go for Caesar or Bedivere for ST (single target) NP since Saber Gilles is objectively the worst Saber in the game and Fergus for AOE (area of effect). Both Caesar and Bedivere have a very potent ST NP and can fill the role of the main damage dealer in your team and their 3* rank makes it pretty easy to get them to NP5 over time, so you have two well working NP nukes for bosses there. Bedivere is slightly better in my opinion since he can boost his NP gauge and apply a defense buff, but he's story locked until you cleared Camelot, so Caesar will probably be your main Saber unless you had luck and got a SR/SSR before :) Grailing both of them will actually make them as potent as many actual SR Sabers when you build a good team to support them though (Fun fact: ST NP Sabers are actually pretty rare, so that's another pro going for them). Fergus is just an all around good Servant. He can buff his own attack and defense, can apply an evade buff to survive a NP nuke and his AOE NP deals some serious damage while also applying a defense down debuff on all enemies, making NP chains deal more damage if you start them with his Buster NP. He's overall a great choice to grail and his versatile skillset can help him to adapt to the enemy while still playing the role of the main damage dealer. |-| Archer= ARCHER We are blessed with basically no useless Archer Servants in the low ranks, so I am going to explain how every Servant can be of help and how a grail can benefit them. Arash: I love my tactical nuke disguised as an archer :3 Arash has one of the strongest AOE NPs in the game, but sadly it also kills him instantly. The fact that he's only a 1* is actually a joke. Put this guy in your team against a hoard of Berserker and Saber enemies and watch them die instantly as he unleashes hell upon them. His first and third skill increase his suvivability while the third also boosts his NP gauge, but sadly he doesn't have a very big healthpool, so he's most commonly used in the backrow of your team or as a weapon to clear the first wave in farming nodes, so another Servant can take his place afterwards for easy 3 turn farming. Grailing him has a pretty straightforward effect: He'll survive more damage and his already strong NP will become the ultimate nuke for teamwipes and farming. Definitely an interesting choice, I wouldn't use too many grails on him though since he can only fire his NP once unless you revive him with a targetable guts (Servants like Iri and Caster Nero come to mind). Kid Gil: What can I say? It's Gil, but instead of donning golden armor and calling us "mongrels" he's now a sweet boy who still likes to straight up pummel enemies in the ground with the Gate of Babylon. He's got an attack buff for the whole team as well as a charm skill and NP-charge up for the whole team. He's a great allrounder and loves to have someone with him who can feed him some crit stars. A solid choice for grails, even though he has no perfectly dedicated role. Billy The Kid: We don't call this guy "Billy The Crit" for nothing. There's not much to say about this beast of a crit damage dealer, he can boost his own crit damage, boost his NP gauge and has a 1 turn evasion skill giving him some survivability on his own while his ST NP ignores evading enemies and surprises with a lot of damage. This guy loves to fight in a quick/crit dmg team and can crit kill almost anything that stands in his way. Grails will make him the absolute MVP for a crit team. Robin Hood: He has almost the same role as Billy, but has a full squad debuff for your enemies and deals extra damage with his ST NP on enemies burdened with his poison. He's also able to use evasion while also ignoring an enemy's evasion in that turn and can boost his NP generation. He's the perfect example for a NP spamming damage dealer and after using him a few times you're gonna wish there was a way to actually skip NP cutscenes (DW when?). All jokes aside, grailing Robin makes a lot of sense for Arts based accounts and he won't let you down :) David: Let's change the focus from damage dealing to support for a second. David can heal himself and bost his def with his first skill, heal the party with his second skill while also applying an evade buff for the whole party and also buff the party's attack with his charisma ability. His ST NP isn't as strong as the other archer's, but his role as support can't be replaced by any other archer like this. The party evade buff will save your party from complete wipe NPs and he can help them retaliate with his charisma, an A grade support unit definitely worth a few grails. The grails are mainly meant to improve his survivability through his bigger healthpool, so he can help your team even more. Euryale is also worth mentioning, since she's incredibly useful for exterminating male enemies, but I decided not to go into detail with her since she's so situational. Don't forget to level her for Camelot though!!! |-| Lancer= LANCER When talking low rank Lancers there are three particular servants who stand atop all of them: Cu Chulainn, Leonidas and Houzouin Inshun. While their strengths are as different as day and night they all excel in their own field, so let's take a look at them :) Cu Chulainn: LANSA GA SHINDA!!! Well.. yeah. In the anime Lancers have the sad destiny of always dying, but Cu decided to just screw with destiny and become Cu "unkillable lancer of doom" Chulainn in F/GO.His first skill is a one time guts buff, his second (and most important) skill gives him an evade buff for three attacks that won't run out if the enemy doesn't attack him, so you can sometimes even have it ready again before they run out and his third skill is a small health boost with debuff wipe. While he already boasts a great arsenal of skills to survive for a very long time he's also got a very potent ST NP that can potentially instantly kill the target or just applies a Def debuff after the hit. His younger version is also just as great, but a bit more damage oriented. I personally just prefer OG Cu. There's a reason why so many in our community decided to grail this beast of a man, the grails can help both with his survivability and his damage output, but he's already very strong at his max lvl70. Houzouin Inshun: Houzouin Inshun is a pretty unusual servant. He can ignore evade buffs, increase crit star drop for himself, increase his Quick Cards strength and seal the enemy's NP for a turn. His NP is a huge attack and crit dmg buff whily applying evade and immunity to getting instantly killed. This guy knows how to crit. A LOT. Sadly we aren't able to get him on NA yet, but he's going to be a servant you don't want to miss on crit teams, so you can definitely look forward to welcoming this troublemaker in your Chaldea. Grails will help him in the same way they do for Cu, but he's also very strong at his max lvl70. Leonidas: Have you ever heard of a guy holding back thousands of Persian soldiers at the Thermopylae with just 300 soldiers at his command? Well I definitely did and thus I loved to see what Type Moon did with my favourite Greek hero. He's a tank able to take a punch or more for your team to make sure the squishy teammates will make it to the boss without any problems, even sacrificing himself for that. Leonidas is able to let the enemy focus on him both with his NP and with his first skill, can apply guts to himself with his second skill and increase the party's buster cards effects with his third. Yes everybody, we got a tank here, and an extremely valuable one at that! There's not much more to say, more grails -> more health -> more tankiness!!! |-| Rider= RIDER The Rider servants, just like the Lancers, provide us with a top three that couldn't be more different from one another. We got Medusa, Ushiwakamaru and Georgios. Let's see what they can do: Georgios: Georgios has the same role Leonidas has, but he's more defensive than Leonidas since he can heal himself and clear his debuffs instead of Leonidas' Buster buff. Georgios' ST NP is very interesting though: It does some damage, BUT it also applies the "dragon" trait on the enemy, making them an easy target for our lord and savior SUMANAI. After all he's another tank to help your other party members through the fights, so some extra health through grails is always a good idea here. Ushiwakamaru: All hail my favourite boss destroyer before I got Assassin Shiki. Ushiwakamaru is hands down the best Rider below SR and in my opinion outclasses some SRs when considering her damage output. She can buff the party's attack and NP generation and apply an evade buff to herself while also increasing her crit star droprate. But now for the juicy stuff: her NP. This ST NP will be the bane for many enemies, especially Beast type enemies like the pillars , while also buffing her crit star drop rate again. Pairing her with a party that can help her spam her NP and buff her makes her the ultimate low rank killing machine. Grails will make her even more deadly, so why not try it out? :D Medusa: Now let's switch from ST NP to completely obliterating groups of enemies. While Ushi excels at boss killing Medusa is the go-to Rider nuke for QP farms and many story nodes as well as ember gathering nodes. She can potentially stun an enemy, greatly increase her damage and increase her NP-gauge while also improving her NP generation rate. This girl knows how to nuke her enemies to oblivion with her NP, definitely a great servant. Grails will mostly benefit her because of her damage output, but I'd recommend leaving her at Lv70 though, since that's enough for farming and classic nodes. |-| Assassin= ASSASSIN Sadly the low rank Assassins are pretty mediocre with two actual gems mixed within. This doesn't mean that they're bad, but they aren't exceptionally good either, so if you want to grail an assassin because of his skills and traits it's definitely going to be one of those three: Cursed Arm Hassan: He's one of the best crit star generators you can get early in the game. His first skill drops a big amount of crit stars at your disposal while his second skill improves his crit damage and the third applies an evade buff while improving his crit star drop rate. I think you can see where this is going right? BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. His ST NP is also potentially instantly killing the target. His only downside is that his damage output without crits isn't very good, so you should pair him with another unit that can take over the role of main damage dealer for him while he gets the stars for that unit. He's also pretty easily killed since his max lvl is only Lv60, so a grail or two can help a lot to make him more viable for late game purposes. Fūma Kotarō: Our little well known ninja with the classic hentai protag haircut sadly doesn't boast Shirou's eroge protag (EX) skill, but he's a very valuable crit star creator and should not be taken lightly. His first skill debuffs the enemy's attack and crit chance (looking at you Spriggan) and his third skill further decreases the enemy's debuff resistance to help with charming, instakilling and so on. Fuma's second skill is an evade that also improves his C.Star drop rate, so that combined with his triple Quick deck makes for a delicious feast of stars everywhere. Talking NP, he's rocking a unusual AOE NP with kinda mediocre damage (especially since it's quick), BUT the fact that it's Quick makes it possible to Quick Brave Chain from it and keep the stars flowing constantly. What makes his NP unusual is the overcharge debuff that comes with it, which is a chance to seal the enemy's skills for one turn over the course of 5 turns. He's not a straight up Star battery like Cursed Arm and needs to actively participate in the battle, but his debuffs and his Quick cards make him a very strong addition to any crit based team. Sasaki Kojirō: The Regend is commonly known as the real savior of France since he literally outclasses Siegfried when slaying the Rider class Wyverns in Orleans. He boasts every skill an Assassin needs: Evade, Crit damage buff, Star Gather Rate buff, Star Drop Rate buff, Stars on demand, a Sure Hit and a debuff cleanse. Sadly his hit counts aren't as good and him being only a 1* Servant caps his skills at level 60, so he highly benefits from grails to make him more viable in combat. His NP is nothing out of the ordinary, a three hit Quick ST NP with pretty average damage. I highly recommend grailing him if you like him so you can use him later in the game as well, but apart from that he's outclassed by the other two mentioned above by quite a bit. |-| Caster= CASTER The Casters also supply us with a great top three to improve our teams: two great authors and a sorceress. Many will already know who I'm talking about (for a very good reason): Shakespeare, Hans Christian Andersen and Medea. Shakespeare: Shakespeare is a very valuable support if you want to spam NPs early, since his third skill on lv10 will instantly boost any servant's NP gauge for 100%. That's not enough for you? Well, he also got an invincibility buff for himself (with a little bit of healing) and a Buster buff for the whole party. He's sadly only a 2*, so the grails are badly needed to increase his survivability, but this guy can turn the tables in an instant. Andersen: You see all those whales swimming around with their Wavers and Merlins and you also want one, but you've got bad luck or are F2P? NO PROBLEM my friend, take this little angry child with you and you're already set! His first skill increases the party's critical damage and the third one drops crit stars in exchange for his own defense, while his second skill charges his NP gauge to the moon and back. You don't know what his NP does? Well, if RNGesus, god of the random number generator, is with you, it will boost your party's attack and def (after strengthening also their crit star droprate) while always applying a health regen buff for 3 turns. So basically you've got def and ang buffs, health regen, stars and crit buffs, almost everything Waver and Merlin usually do to support your team. This is literally the child of both SSR Casters after a drunken sex escapade in Merlin's tower. This little guy knows how to support a team, but his status as a 2* leaves him pretty squishy, so he'd gladly take a grail or two to be of more use to you. Try him, he's a great friend for every team there is ;) Medea: So the other Casters were supports... guess we'll need someone who can actually deal damage, too :) And that she can. Medea's able to remove an ally's debuffs while increasing their NP charge rate, can boost her own NP for up to 150% when you max her skill and can heal herself for up to 2500 health. As you can see, she's a NP spammer, and a fearsome one at that. While her NP damage is average she also recharges her own NP gauge with it AND removes any buffs her target had, so it's great for just spamming a boss who can't stop buffing themselves >:) As a 3* she is already very usable at her max Lvl70, but more health and damage never hurt anyone but your enemies, right? |-| Berserker= BAASAAAKAAAA The last Servant category we're going to take a look at are the Berserkers. I know I hated using Berserkers back when I started the game since everything is effective against them and they die easily, but once you get the hang of it they can be incredibly useful. The top three I picked for this list are Spartacus, Asterios and Kiyohime, so let's go and see what the final three servants can do :) Spartacus Spartacus just doesn't want to die. He can give himself health regen, boost his health together with a Buster buff and can apply Guts while also healing himself. Apart from that his AOE NP deals def buffs ignoring damage while healing him again, so it's very useful for farming as well. Now imagine him being able to tussle with the big boys after increasing his health and attack stats with a few grails :) Asterios Now this guy is interesting. His first skill is just a straightforward attack boost, while the second increases his defense and debuff resistance and the third increases his Buster effectiveness and crit star absorption. But here's the catch: This guy is a Berserker who mainly debuffs his enemies with his NP. No damage, but a LOT of debuffs for both attack and defense. He's just straight up demolishing the enemy's effectiveness and then kills them after raining debuffs on them. Definitely useful in the late game, but his low rank stops him from being viable without raising his stats a bit, so some grails are definitely welcome. Kiyohime The last servant we will take a look at is Kiyohime, the vengeful yandere dragon you definitely don't wanna cross paths with. Her skill kit is pretty easy: a def buff for herself, a def debuff that also buffs attack for the enemy and a Buster buff for herself that also rids her of any debuffs. Her overall damage is pretty low for a Berserker, but her AOE NP is beyond tasty (not only because of the grilled enemies). It's a relatively strong Buster AOE NP (remember her buff?) that also inflicts stun and burn and she boasts a pretty high NP charge rate compared to other Berserkers. BERSERKER STUN AND BURN NP SPAM HERE WE COME! :D She may need somebody to cover for her missing survivability skills, but I've also seen videos of people soloing endbosses with her, so she's definitely not as weak as you may think when seeing her for the first time. As a 3* she already has a max Lvl of 70, but the extra stats definitely don't hurt her if you like her in your teams :) |-| Avenger= Antonio Salieri: We also have a 3* Avenger in JP: Antonio Salieri But his low rank isn't holding him back at all, if anything it's actually great since this makes him a nice choice to limit your team comp costs. His first skill basically already tells you what he's going to be used for: Crits. It provides you with a steady source of C.Stars while also boosting his critical strength. His second skill boosts his Arts cards and his third debuffs the enemy's def. To further boost his damage his NP Overcharge debuffs the enemy's Arts card resistance even more and opens them for devastating Arts Brave chains with the NP as first base. Salieri is very straightforward and is a solid main damage dealer for Arts Crit teams, the only downside I see is him having a QAABB deck instead of a QAAAB one. If you don't have a high rank Avenger or just like his looks (which are absolutely stunning in my opinion) then he is definitely a perfect choice for grails. The fact that not many enemies are effective against Avengers just makes his stat boost from grailing even better and he will most certainly not disappoint you at all. This concludes my little selection of recommended low rank servants. If you want to know more about low ranks and specifically ones that I didn't mention I'd highly recommend you check out Necor's Low Star Guide for more in-depth analysis and information. One more argument you may consider when grailing is class modifiers and various other modifiers that alter a Servant's stats from their pure stats you can see on the card. JoAlter made a easily understandable guide explaining modifiers, but in short: some classes like Assassins and Casters generally have less effective attack stats than you can see on the cards while others like Rulers, Lancers and Berserkers have higher effective stats than you can see on their cards. Because of that Rulers and Lancers are among the most effective classes to grail when just going for plain stat boosts (keep in mind that Rulers have pretty high max stats already though). Others may tell you to just go for raw power and grail SRs and SSRs to make them your ultimate trump card since they are already very strong and can become your ultimate trump card, but in the end I'd just like you to pause that train of thought and ask you one question: Is there a servant you are particularly fond of and do you like them in your team? Yes? Then a grail definitely isn't wasted on them :) We are playing a PvE game with no actual competition between players and you can technically clear the whole game with any team you like; there are actually some impressive videos of people soloing final bosses with 3*s on YouTube (I personally love seeing Honako Green unleash hell over a final boss using mostly low rank Servants. You should give those videos a try if you want to see some wonderful gameplay or need some inspiration for your own setups!). And that's the fun part. Just play the game the way you feel comfortable and grail whoever seems to be worth it to you. And if you have any questions about the game don't hesitate to ask the community, we are glad to help anybody who wants to play the game we all love and celebrate here. Thank you for reading, good luck and see you in Chaldea. ARandomStone Category:Blog posts Category:Guides